Round Table Post

When I think about strategically investing "new" layers of politics that could help us build stronger movements to fight the right wing wind/tornado that is blowing on us, my mind goes instinctively to the layer of intimacies and the politicization of the notion of care.

Feminists, Queer, Anti-Oppression & Decolonization perspectives offer us interesting insights on the links between the systemic violences and the intimate violences that shape our daily life, our environment and our bodies. We theoretically know that "the personal is political" but we still have a hard time to embody it in our politics.

A lot of the Conservatives attacks have been done in the name of security: militarization, police brutality, shutting the borders, etc. We know that those attacks create more insecurities and violences in our communities. But when we personally confront intimate violences (domestic abuse, rape, lack of consent, harrassement, isolation, etc) we often rely on the state for our own "security".

And again, it only creates more insecurities and violences in our lives.

While we’re walking towards social justice, our movements tend to leave issues of intimate violences where they too often happen: in the isolation of our homes. We fail at recognizing that those violences exist inside our movements. The perpetrators aren’t big oil companies, the state or business man; they are our partners, our families or our comrades.

So while we’re strategizing against tar sands or cuts in social programs; let’s create safer spaces where we can challenge power relationships, unpack privileges, be accountable to one another, break cycles of violences and move towards healing.

Let’s show we care about the people in our communities and that we’re committed to our collective struggle and ideals as much as we’re committed to one another. So we can fight side by side, knowing that we have each others' backs.

Commentaires

Good points. Security is the lowest common denominator of politics and all that matters to many. All that many want is a police state. Many see themselves as sheep. It's the Christian paradigm. The fundamentalist Xian voter base of Western Canada has never been so politically influential. See Canadian Middle East policy. Xianity is a phase of irrecoverable decadence.